“The invisible violence, present or past, is active even if we don’t see it or decide to look away from it, but like the unconscious, sooner or later the covered truth will come up to the surface and be acted out while controlling us simultaneously.”

– Nadia Kaabi-Linke

Piero Atchugarry Gallery is pleased to announce We Didn’t Know W'e’re Ready by Tunisian artist Nadia Kaabi-Linke curated by Silvia Cirelli. The expressive journey of Kaabi-Linke delves into the complexities of human nature revealing an “architecture of pain” marked interdependent power dynamics and the struggles of mankind's vulnerability. Her work shows how people are affected by power, memory, and vulnerability. Memory is central to her work — it's the starting point for telling both personal and collective stories. Her artworks act like emotional records, helping us understand hidden parts of our culture today.

The title chosen for Kaabi-Linke’s Miami debut solo exhibition goes exactly in this direction, it is an invitation to encompass time fluidity, to better understand the evolutionary codes of our living. We Didn’t Know We’re Ready, deliberately embraces a grammatical slip, blending verb tenses to highlight the constant convergence of yesterday and today. This temporal dissonance becomes a conceptual tool, a transversal narrative that invites a comprehensive reading, where each artwork acts as an emotional archive, a mosaic of confessions that reflects and translates the codes of contemporary culture. It is on this metaphorical bridge between past and present that the artist projects her own cultural space.

Press Release

Curatorial Text